A distorted remembrance of life through my memories, impressions, and dreams.

Squirrel!

We have one tree in our yard. Out of a 100×100′ lot in a neighborhood where the streets are lined with forty-foot tall Doug firs and a mix of elm, oak, and maples, we have one tree.

OK, I lie: there’s a holly tree in the backyard, but someone hacked the top out of it and it is more bush than tree. And there’s a camellia bush pruned to look like a very short tree. And an ancient rhododendron that stands nearly 15′ tall (it’s still a bush). But if we’re talking about a tree that stands 20 feet or so, reaching into the sky like a tree should, then we have only the one.

It is a dying lodgepole pine tree. It stands smack dab in our small front yard. Most of the living branches are on the lee side of the tree and those are dying back. It has some fungus deep in its heart and some day we will have to replace it.

It is a wildlife tree and I hate to think of it dying and going away. In the summer, the hummingbirds explore the uppermost branches. The rest of the year, all sorts of birds flock to it. We hang our bird feeders off of the lowest branches, some ten feet off the ground.

We have had every visitor from Pileated woodpeckers to northern flickers to nuthatches, towhees, varied thrush, American robins, crows, dark-eyed juncos, two kinds of chickadees, house finches, song sparrows, English house sparrows, starlings, small warblers and flocks of grosbeaks. We have had more than 20 band-tailed pigeons flock to our lone pine tree in a neighborhood of giant fir trees.

Sunday, three Eastern Fox squirrels set up camp in the tree.

Yeah, sucker. YOU. I don’t think he was terribly intimidated by me. He’s also stupid with testosterone.